Recipe Tip: Haunch of Venison with Pumpkin Dumplings and Pears

Top Recipe for 4 Persons by Constantin Fischer. All ingredients and tips for getting it right. This is how autumn tastes: The wild roast is rolled, with a bread dumpling variant and a fruity twist

Ingredients

• 1 boned haunch of venison
• 5 sprig(s) marjoram
• salt
• peanut oil
• bones and trimmings from the haunch of venison (if you did not de-bone the haunch yourself, ask your butcher)
• one carrot, one celery stick, one parsnip and 1/4 of a celeriac
• 0.75 l red wine
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 2 sprig(s) fresh lovage
• 1 kaffir lime leaf
• 1 bay leaf
• 4 cloves
• 0.5 star anise
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• salt
• peanut oil
• 1 small Hokkaido pumpkin
• 500 g stale bread
• 2 eggs
• 1 lime
• tonka bean
• 1 pear
• 2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon birch sugar/xylitol
• cranberry preserve

Steps

1. Preheat oven to 150 °C. Lightly salt the inside of the leg of venison and sprinkle with marjoram leaves over it, then roll it up and tie it with kitchen string.
2. Brown the rolled roast in a hot pan with a little peanut oil on all sides, then place in an ovenproof dish and cook in the oven at 150 °C for 90 minutes.
3. For the sauce, fry the bones and meat scraps in a pan with a little peanut oil for approx. 10 minutes.
4. Cut the root vegetables into thin slices and fry them with the brown sugar and a little salt for another 5 minutes. Then deglaze with red wine, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar.
5. Bring to the boil once and simmer with the lid on for 60 minutes, pour the sauce through a sieve into a pot and reduce to a third on a rolling boil.
6. Add spices and infuse for 10 minutes. Finally season with salt. Wash the pear, halve and cut into thin slices.
7. Place the pear slices in a bowl with the vinegar and sugar, mix together and leave to marinate for 20 minutes.
8. Cut the stem off the Hokkaido pumpkin, halve the pumpkin, remove the seeds with a spoon and cut into wedges.
9. Fill a saucepan with a steaming basket with approx. 3 cm of water, place the pumpkin wedges in the steaming basket and cook with the lid closed for 20 minutes until soft.
10. Put the pumpkin slices with 300 g stale bread, 2 egg yolks, some grated tonka bean and lime zest and milk into a bowl and knead together into an airy mix, let rest for 10 minutes.
11. Add the remaining stale bread and fold in. Then form the dumplings into the desired size. This is easier if you wet your hands with cold water.
12. Then add the dumplings to boiling water and simmer with the lid slightly open for 20 minutes. In the meantime, remove the venison from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes before carving into slices.
13. Serve venison, meat and sauce on warmed plates, garnish with cranberry preserve.
14. Cheese Ravioli with Creamed Salad and Truffles These cheese ravioli (called kasnudeln) are a speciality from Carinthia in Austria. Top chef Hubert Wallner shares his deluxe version and shows how to make, fill and properly crimp the dumplings.
15. Chanterelle Mushroom Stew Chanterelles play the leading role in this flavourful vegetarian stew. Serve it in style, with bread dumplings drenched in creamy sauce spiked with rum. Vegetarian
16. Chicken Soup with Bread Dumplings A classic chicken soup made even more tasty with the addition of bread dumplings. Soup
17. Austrian Blueberry Dumplings These fruity dumplings are pure pastry heaven and they're easy to make, too. If you can, use fresh blueberries (and if you are lucky enough to have access to wild ones, even better!) but frozen berries will work, too. Dessert
18. Dumplings of Butternut Squash with Mushrooms The homemade gnocchi are combined with the treasures collected from the forest. Dumplings